Tag Archives: Evidence Check – media

As predicted the media produced the expected snow – every national paper, every TV channel ran the story along similar lines: “Homeopathy should not be funded on the NHS, say MPs”. The Mail and Telegraph ran stories on Sunday night, which was interesting since the Science and Technology Committee were adamant that details of the report should not be released to the public until after 11am Monday. Bloggers had already written detailed posts directly quoting the report and published them at precisely 11am. Leaked? Surely not,

So say the denialists twittering away this morning as we all wait for the publication of the so-called Parliamentary Evidence Check.

National newspapers are already running headlines reporting that the committee calls for removal of homeopathy from the NHS. Which is strange since there is a press embargo for at least another 2 hours….. But then the Science and Technology committee are in charge of the press release and the press conference is being held at the Science Media Centre and restricted to national media only.

But that’s only more evidence that this whole exercise is a set up, a sham, just more of the orchestrated anti-homeopathy campaign that’s been running in the UK for years.

Sense about Science, the Big Pharma sponsored lobby group presenting themselves as a registered charity is up to their necks in it Continue reading →

Let’s hope the Science and Technology Committee read the written submissions sent in for the Evidence Check on Homeopathy. I am busy ploughing through them and interesting reading they make.

Is homeopathy effective? Does the Evidence support that?

Score: YES – 28 NO – 11 Neutral – 7

To be fair, 3 of the YES group are satisfied patients making a plea for keeping homeopathy within the NHS, and – as we are reminded daily by the NOs – anecdotal evidence, however much there is, whether new born babies, herds of cattle, comatose patients or people with intractable conditions not helped by 30 years of conventional medicine (no placebo effect there then) – does not count.

The remaining 25 in the YES group are well constructed, many of them one might say are academic, papers, fully referenced and carefully laying out the reasons for their conclusions. Continue reading →

I am stunned by the two interviews I just watched on the BBC. One with the polite Dr Sara Eames from the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital and the very confused journalist, Celia Walden. And the other with Professor Lewith and the bulldozer Dr Sarah Jarvis, a GP.

Here we have homeopathy taking another major beating in the media following Boots’ gift of a sound bite from the parliamentary Evidence Check – which I feel compelled to mention again, IS NOT YET OVER.

A mild mannered and polite Dr. Sara Eames waited for her questions and answered them, albeit repetitively. But WHY oh WHY did she not set the seriously confused Celia Walden straight? Continue reading →

DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE EVIDENCE CHECK IS NOT FINISHED, NOR THE PARLIAMENTARY REPORT WRITTEN predictably the media is all over the oral submissions – having waited hungrily for the sound bites and gobbled them up, they’re now spitting them out all over the place…

Boots is on the carpet for selling medicines they ‘don’t believe work’ – pulling that carpet from under their retail sales, by informing the public that Boots is selling them nothing but ‘sugar pills’ at 5 quid a bottle.

Today I’m full of admiration for the British Government – all their Select Committee meetings are accessible from anywhere in the world via the internet. I just finished watching two hours of the committee charged with looking into the evidence for homeopathy, or the lack thereof. Continue reading →